“Will it hurt me?” asked the exnoo.
“No. It’s not dead, but it isn’t going to move until it’s reactivated.”
“What next?”
“Strange… there’s bamboo here, beneath the slabs. Fresh bamboo. I wonder…”
From her podium Suzan Cnasis gazed out over the rustling greenery of Bambooine. Far to the north she saw the grey silhouette of the Siggurat, stepped and pyramidic in form, with pale blue mist floating around its flat summit. Its base was lost in a billowing mass of bamboo.
She turned back to the archaeological dig that lay around her. The dig team had removed two hundred square metres of bamboo, revealing chocolate brown topsoil peppered with stones. She checked her fingerwatch. Lackshmi Devatasive, her colleague, was late for work. Again.
Suzan sighed.
An hour later she heard a familiar belch, then voices amidst the rustle of the bamboo, then the sound of metal shod boots clacking on a board path. Moments later Lackshmi stood beside her on the podium.
Lackshmi smiled. “You’re early, Su!”
Suzan ignored the remark.
Lackshmi stretched like a cat emerging from deep sleep. “Weather’s looking bad. The forecast was for storms.”
Suzan glanced at the sky, pale with faux-cirrus. “Perhaps,” she said. Glancing at Lackshmi’s long white hair she said, “What’s that stuck in your...?”
Lackshmi pulled what appeared to be a lump of toffee from her hair. “Oh, just some stuff. We were at Moosha’s place in Olivea last night, drinking muzik.”
“Drinking... what?”
“Muzik. I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard of it. A new drug synthesized by kids in Vin. It leaves your sight alone but gives you amazing sonic hallucinations.” She laughed, then stretched again. “I could get addicted to it, easy!”
Suzan turned away. She had heard enough.
“To work,” said Lackshmi. She glanced over the revealed earth, then pointed to the northern corner. “What’s that?”
“What’s what?”
Lackshmi pointed again. “That dark patch in the corner.”
Suzan was annoyed to discover Lackshmi had spotted a feature that she had missed. “I don’t know,” she said. But before she could tell her colleague about the pre-dig survey Lackshmi had jumped off the podium and was running over the earth.
Suzan followed. Together, they studied the earth in the corner. “That might be new,” Suzan said.
“Yeah, I agree. But this place hasn’t been touched for decades. Centuries, I’m guessing.”
Suzan bent down to check the surface of the earth. “You don’t know for certain that it’s not been touched for decades,” she said. “Call the diggers.”
A few minutes later a bot-mole dig team arrived. Suzan downloaded their logs into her handset and studied what they had done, but was disappointed to find a set of normal statistics. She took a trowel and began scratching at the dark patch of earth. It led directly into the uncut topsoil at the edge of the new site.
“Are you going to be long?” Lackshmi said.
“This needs to be done layer by layer,” Suzan replied. “I think this is very recent. There’s no archaeology here, this is the edge of a new pit, and it goes on beneath the bamboo.”
Lackshmi shrugged. “Pull up a few more metres of bamboo.”
Suzan considered this suggestion. The borders of the site were undefined. Bot-moles were on hand. “Very well,” she said. “Just a few more square metres.”
Lackshmi drank O-lime tonic water while the bot-moles dug. Suzan dragged her hand through her bobbed black hair and watched. She was nervous. Nerves struck her every time a new site opened. From her flask she sipped rose tea.
After half an hour they stood facing the top of a fresh pit. “It’s no more than five years old,” said Lackshmi. “Five months, even.”
“We do not know that yet,” Suzan replied. “It will be difficult to date –”
“Get digging. This is just building work or something, we need to get it out of the way and reach the interesting stuff.”
“But there has been no building work here for a century. You said so yourself.”
“Oh, give it a rest! It’s obviously new. Dig an exploratory trench and find out what’s in there. I’m getting bored with this already.”
Suzan cleaned her spectacles while the bot-moles removed layers of earth, their multiple legs a blur.
Then, “Stop!”
Lackshmi had yelled. She spat green water.
“All stop.” The bot-moles froze.
“What’s the matter?” asked Suzan.
Lackshmi did not answer. Like a gymnast she bounded over the bot-moles, to kneel down in the earth and with her bare hands pull clods away. Then she sat up. “Su, come look!”
There in the earth lay the top of a metal box.
Lackshmi dug more. Suzan bit her lip. This was unorthodox.
Within a minute Lackshmi had revealed a steel box, less than a metre long on each side. “I told you it was new,” she said. “Somebody buried this recently.” She glanced at the bamboo surrounding her. “They chose this spot because it was quiet and out of the way, even for this quarter.” Then she shivered. “I wonder if there’s a body in there?”
“Must be a small one if there is. A child. Shall I call Show –”
“No! We’ll just open it ourselves. It’s probably nothing.”
Suzan recognised the signs – Lackshmi was unstoppable in this mood. It had on previous occasions led to bitter struggles: the artist versus the scientist. Yet they both needed the other.
The bot-moles were not suited to intricate work, so Suzan summoned a sentient. It arrived, brown and hairy with twenty eyes, and like a gothic clockmaker it fiddled with the edges of the seal, the ticking and tapping of its mechanisms contrasting with the nearby voices of the human dig team. After ten minutes it stopped, paused, adjusted its position, then used its front leg to force open the lid in one sudden motion. It scuttled away, leaving Suzan and Lackshmi to peer into the box.
A chaotic jumble: computer memory, data disks, electromagnetic equipment, ancient paper. Even books, real books, like the ones Suzan had seen in museums.
“Oh, my,” said Lackshmi. “Oh... no!”
“What?”
“You know what this is, don’t you?”
Astonished, then annoyed, Suzan stared at her colleague. “No, I do not know what this is,” she said.
“It’s an information burial.”
None the wiser, Suzan frowned and looked again into the box.
“This box was buried by xmech,” said Lackshmi. “This is information, knowledge, pertaining to somebody or something.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“The complete obliteration of facts. If it was deliberate, it’s the equivalent of murder. We need to locate a bounty hunter.”
“A what?”
“Hah! I studied the xmech decades ago, when I was an archaeology student in the Philosophers’ Sector.”
“The xmech?” asked Suzan. This was news to her. “Why not human?”
“An ex-lover got me interested. Human archaeology isn’t everything.”
Suzan nodded. “Yes, I understand that, but –”
“Anyway, I know something of their ways. Not much, of course, they’re impossible to deconstruct because of the way they interact.”
Suzan shrugged.
“There’s a fixed number of xmech personalities. Lots of jostling to get the best identities, which are always the oldest – the wisest, you see. Xmech individuals are recreations of past public identities. They change, ever so slowly, as the years pass.”
“What has this to do with our information burial?”
“Well, with the xmech being entirely artificial, and alien, they don’t see information the way we do. Su, I’ve seen reconstructions of information burials before. What puzzles me though is why xmech would bury information in the human zone… normally they’d only bury in their own terri
tory.”
A thought struck Suzan at once. “Perhaps a human asked xmech to arrange and perform the burial.”
Lackshmi stared at her. “Of course!” Clapping her on the shoulder she said, “Well done! Yes, somebody wanted an obliteration of facts. Now, I wonder who? And why?”
The weather turned as the sun set. Rain began to patter over the Lunan sectors, reducing visibility, soaking everything. As evening fell, Lackshmi returned with a young woman at her side.
“This is Freosanrai,” said Lackshmi. “She’s going to analyse the burial.”
Freosanrai nodded. “Pleased to meet you,” she said. “Where’s the box?”
Suzan hesitated. The voice came from the rucksack on the woman’s back.
Indicating the rucksack, Freosanrai said, “No vocal cords – pulled out by muzik assassins. I speak through a leather machine.”
Suzan had instructed one of the diggers to carry the box to the rear of the makeshift tent, where it lay concealed by chitin scales. Freosanrai pulled off the cover, carried the box to the table and set it down. Then she opened it and began taking out the contents one by one. Each object she studied for a few seconds, sniffing on occasion, once shaking a tube, riffling through the books, then investigating more. After half an hour she was done. Over a hundred objects lay scattered around the box.
“There does not seem enough here to guarantee information death,” Suzan observed.
Lackshmi nodded. To Freosanrai she said, “Suzan thinks a human requested this to be done.”
Suzan smiled. Generosity was one of Lackshmi’s many faults.
Freosanrai drawled, “The lady’s right. The mechoes, they never bury outside their zones unless for another race. A guy did this, probably one who lives in this sector.”
“A man or a woman,” Suzan remarked.
Freosanrai shook her head. “No, ‘twas a guy. I know. I sense the pattern of male friendship here. You realise there’s religion in this box?”
“How do you know?”
“I know the way mechoes view our stuff. See, they have their own view, that we don’t understand. But they see us distinctly, which I recognise. I see clues here. Check out the books. Old. I can tell you what all this is about. Me, I think it was a small fact that was excised and buried – you were right, lady. With computers everywhere we live in a big big network. It’s not easy to untangle information. But a small fact… that you can untangle and excise.”
“Is this what you would call an information murder?” asked Lackshmi.
“Depends on the context. I’ll tell you more after you pay me.”
Suzan handed over an e-note.
Pocketing the note, Freosanrai said, “This burial was made recently. I’m able to tease out the threads of information that the mechoes had to cut. See, they do that good. They cut and cut and cut, until a network is isolated. Very clever. And a network, it can be any shape, see? Not just a circle or a square. Can be looped in three-dee space. But the mechoes are able to isolate everything pertaining to a fact, and bury. This what we have here. The burial of just one thing.” She nodded and smiled, as if pleased with her analysis.
“But what is the fact?” Suzan asked.
“That I can’t tell you, not exactly, not yet.”
“What?”
“Shush,” Lackshmi said. “There’s more Su, if you’ll listen.”
“As I suspected,” Freosanrai continued, “this is to do with religion. You know the Jules guy?”
“The who?” Suzan asked.
“Jules Aonnarron,” Lackshmi said, “the cultist at the Temple of Stela.”
Suzan had heard this name. “Yes,” she said, “his reputation is bad.”
“I think he’s the man that buried this information,” said Freosanrai. “With these finds I’ll go to the Temple of Stela and interrogate Jules Aonnarron. Reckon he deliberately buried an idea. Then I’ll come back.”
“You’d better go now,” said Suzan. “Download your report into my handset before you leave.”
Freosanrai took the retrieved information away as fast as she could. She congratulated the exnoo on its mimicry. “You spoke well,” she said.
“Once we knew the burial was real,” the exnoo replied, “it was easy. But now you have to discover from Jules Aonnarron why he buried the xmech idea.”
“Let me make a guess,” Freosanrai replied. “There is no such person as Jules Aonnarron. It will be one of the Artisans – somebody is trying to frame me. Somebody is trying to force me out of Eluna, but I’m not going to let them succeed. I have one advantage. I found the multifigur.”
“Without it you’d have no evidence,” agreed the exnoo. “But the might of the Artisans opposes you, and you are just one woman –”
“I’ll succeed! Back into the rucksack, quickly. I want this over with.”
The Temple of Stela was a tall, dark building made of stone. Ivy grew over its upper half, while the lower half was covered with damp, brown moss. Freosanrai opened the main door and walked into a long, narrow chamber whose ceiling was so high she could not see it.
“The xmech will take over Luna,” said a voice.
“Grandfather!” Freosanrai gasped.
Zebenunai walked out of the shadows to her side. “But do you have evidence?” he asked.
Freosanrai frowned. “Evidence?”
“Come, child!”
“Oh… you mean the multifigur. Er, yes, I found it. And of course I recognised your handwriting on the objects in the box you had the xmech bury.”
“This is a great shame. I would have succeeded, otherwise.”
“Succeeded?”
Zebenunai nodded. “The xmech mining ship is not an xmech mining ship. It is the first of the spiderwebs returned to Sol – the vanguard of the coming colonisation. But, you see, the Earth is not alive anymore. Many things are not as they were millennia ago when the spiderwebs departed. And so the spiderwebs are jostling for knowledge of us, of Luna, of Eluna.”
“Then that’s why the multifigur didn’t pollinate –”
“I assumed it would remain within Eluna. There, I made a mistake. Then events developed beyond my control. And now I will have you kill you.”
“Me? No! Why?”
“You know too much. You have asserted your freedom from the Artisans by uncovering knowledge – you have effectively become a commoner. And no commoner can know what you now know.”
“But… grandfather, no! You can’t kill me!”
Zebenunai hesitated. “There is one way out,” he said.
Freosanrai trembled. “What?”
Zebenunai walked over to Freosanrai and took her rucksack, lifting it up and shaking it so that the exnoo fell out. He stamped on it, squashing it with the heel of his boot. Freosanrai stared, too shocked to cry.
“That is the first part,” Zebenunai said. “And now for you –”
“But you said you wouldn’t –”
“I’m not going to kill you! I’m going to properly make you part of the family. The family of Artisans. Unfortunately, in becoming part of the family you will lose your freedom. But you are almost an adult now, and I think the time is right. Do you know what we are?”
“The rulers of Luna. The elite, the long-lived. The marsh people of Eluna.”
“We are not exactly human, child. But our makers were. Have you not wondered why we alone live and work in Eluna? It is because we are symbiotic with the chemtrees. Once, they were human. But such distinctions are no longer relevant. Life has become smudged now it is off the Earth. Alas that I had to tell you this so early in your life.”
“I don’t understand what you mean.”
Zebenunai replied, “My mistake means the time has come for you to assume a new identity. I am not just Jules Aonnarron, I am many others in Luna. Come to me, child. Let me show you who else you will be.”
Freosanrai nodded. “You don’t want me to be independent, do you? You framed me –”
“To teach you.” Zebenunai sho
ok his head. “I am sorry it had to be this way. But the family is more important than the individual. This, you have learned.”
Freosanrai nodded again. She had been crushed, she had been moulded. With a sinking heart she realised her fate. There was no escape. She would no longer be Freosanrai.
SHALL I TELL YOU THE PROBLEM WITH TIME TRAVEL?
ADAM ROBERTS
Adam Roberts was born in the year 3,061,965 and has time-travelled back to London, England, to the early years of the extraordinarily backward and primitive 21st century, in order to convey a message of the utmost importance to humankind. That message is hidden somewhere in one of his dozen SF novels or several dozen SF short stories. You have to read them all to find it.
Zero
This is no simulation. The friction-screaming fills the sky. An iceberg as big as the sun is up there, and then it is bigger than the sun, getting huger with terrifying rapidity. This is happening to a world that had, up to this moment, known no noise at all save the swishing of insects through tropical air; or the snoring of surf on the beach. But this, now, is the biggest shout ever heard. Apocalyptic panic. And the asteroid falls further, superheating the atmosphere around it, the outer layer of ice subliming away in a glorious windsock of red and orange and black, down and down, until this world ends.
But – stop. Wait a minute. This hasn’t anything to do with anything. Disregard this. There’s no asteroid, and there never was. He doesn’t know whether he is going on or coming back. Which is it, forward or backward? Let’s go to
One
A City. A pleasant, well-ordered city, houses and factories and hospitals, built on a delta through which seven rivers flow to the sea. The megalosaurs have long gone, and the swamps have long since dried up, and the mega-forests have sunk underground, the massive trunks taller than ships’ masts, sinking slowly under the surface and through the sticky medium, down, to be transformed into something rich and strange, to blacks and purples, to settle as coal brittle as coral. The world that the asteroid ended is stone now: stone bones and stone shells, scattered through the earth’s crust. Imagine a capricious god playing at an enormous game of Easter-egg-hunt, hiding the treasures in the bizarrest places. Except there is no god, it is chance that scattered the petrified confetti under the soil in this manner.
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